Abstract
Melania snail(Semisulcopira bensoni) is used as ingredient in Korean traditional soup and nutritional foods. Generally, lipoxygenase in several food products may produce off-flavors during their processing and storage. Therefore, the inactivation of lipoxygenase is required to make the better extracts from Melania sanil. Also, the quality on freshness of Melania snail may be evaluated by lipoxygenase activity. The lipoxygenae activity was the highest at 40~60% saturation among several concentrations in salting-ouot saturated solution of ammonium sulfate. The partial purification of lipoxygenase was successfully obtained by Sephacryl S-200 gel chromatography. The first peak among three peaks for protein determination showed the highest activity of lipoxygenase in 13~16 fractions among 100 fractions. The highest peak of lipoxygenase activity by ion exchange chromatography was shown at 0.1M NaCl. In the purification step, the specific activity was 20.8U/mg and activity yield was 19.8%. The optimum pH and temperature were pH6.0~8.0 and 3$0^{\circ}C$, respectively. Molecular weight of the lipoxygenase was estimated about 35kDa by SDS-PAGE.